Slashdot Mirror
Harvard Researchers Suggest Interstellar Object Might Have Been From Alien Civilization (bostonglobe.com)
A strange interstellar object that invaded our solar system and passed close to Earth in the fall of 2017 could have been an artificial object, a piece of a spacecraft from an alien civilization, Harvard researchers are suggesting in a new paper [PDF]. From a report: "There is data on the orbit of this object for which there is no other explanation. So we wrote this paper suggesting this explanation," said Professor Avi Loeb, chairman of the Harvard astronomy department. "The approach I take to the subject is purely scientific and evidence-based. As far as I know, there is no other explanation. You can rule it out or in, based on additional data." He said the study had been accepted for publication in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Nov. 12.
The paper, written by Loeb and postdoctoral researcher Shmuel Bialy, suggests the object might be a light sail, or solar sail -- a proposed method of powering spacecraft that uses a sail to catch radiation pressure and propel the spacecraft, just as a normal sail uses the wind to propel a boat. The object 'Oumuamua -- Hawaiian for "messenger from afar arriving first" -- is the first ever observed intruding in the orbits of our planets. It was picked up by telescopes in October 2017 at the University of Hawaii's Haleakala Observatory, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. It is on its way out of the solar system and expected to never return. Scientists say other "interstellar" objects may have sailed by in the past, undetected.
The object raised eyebrows. It was monitored for signs of radio signals as weak as one-tenth of a cellphone-strength signal, but nothing was detected. Researchers said in December 2017 that it appeared to be a naturally formed, icy object covered with a dry crust. Further reading: Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua Is a Comet After All (June 2018), Scientists say mysterious 'Oumuamua' object could be an alien spacecraft, and Cigar-shaped interstellar object may have been an alien probe, Harvard paper claims.
The paper, written by Loeb and postdoctoral researcher Shmuel Bialy, suggests the object might be a light sail, or solar sail -- a proposed method of powering spacecraft that uses a sail to catch radiation pressure and propel the spacecraft, just as a normal sail uses the wind to propel a boat. The object 'Oumuamua -- Hawaiian for "messenger from afar arriving first" -- is the first ever observed intruding in the orbits of our planets. It was picked up by telescopes in October 2017 at the University of Hawaii's Haleakala Observatory, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. It is on its way out of the solar system and expected to never return. Scientists say other "interstellar" objects may have sailed by in the past, undetected.
The object raised eyebrows. It was monitored for signs of radio signals as weak as one-tenth of a cellphone-strength signal, but nothing was detected. Researchers said in December 2017 that it appeared to be a naturally formed, icy object covered with a dry crust. Further reading: Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua Is a Comet After All (June 2018), Scientists say mysterious 'Oumuamua' object could be an alien spacecraft, and Cigar-shaped interstellar object may have been an alien probe, Harvard paper claims.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Not to be a downer but a far simpler explanation is that it just had an unusual manner of outgassing possibly due to the volatiles being below the surface and taking longer to heat.
Message to Heavens Gate STOP Pick up delayed STOP Delayed by 19 orbits around your star STOP Thanks, Your SpaceUberPilot R2D2C3PO STOP.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Obviously it was alien and in search of intelligence and it just passed us by.
It might have been alien, but almost certainly wasn't.
You're not going to be landing a largish research grant with that attitude.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If it deployed a light sail upon leaving the solar system, the sail would be reflecting sunlight back at us now. A sail big enough to accelerate an object of that size would be visible.
Nobody has suggested that. The suggestion is that it could be a discarded piece of an old light sail.
I just happened to read the paper yesterday, and we're here dozens of comments in and nobody commenting has read it.
The jokes are amusing but assuming what the paper says and reacting to it is a less useful application of time that reading it (and maybe not even taking the time for reacts, if one must choose) or just cracking stupid jokes.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Should've said it had a chance of changing our climate. That always works.
Also, the closer you get to the galactic center the more volatile to life the environment gets. As such, life has more time to grow and advance the further one is from the galactic core
That's quite an assumption. A more violent environment (assuming you meant violent and not volatile) might also be a driving force behind faster evolution.
For example, on earth the great extinctions actually sped up the evolution. Without them (or better: in between them) evolution went relative slow.
Of course, you don't want a bunch of supernova's and gamma rays ionizing any atom on the planet all the time, but a more `challenging` environment might as well speed up evolution instead of slowing it down. We just don't know yet until we increase our current sample size of 1.
(posting as anon as i modded a bit in the topic already)
Did it come from Earth?
No?
Then it's alien.
It's clearly an alien spacecraft that got hulled and tumbled out uncontrollably into space in a battle long ago. Over the millennia it's been floating through space it simply iced over and collected dust. Either that or the Arachnids missed us, those stupid bugs.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's on arxiv. It's almost certainly trash.
... and it's been accepted by ApJ letters, so it's almost certainly not.
It literally says:
"On October 19, 2017, the first interstellar object in the Solar System, âOumuamua (1I/2017 U1) was discovered by the PAN-STARRS1 survey"
The paper is dated November 1st. In 13 days these people have looked at the FIRST EVER INTERSTELLAR OBJECT that we've literally only just been able to detect and come to the conclusion that it can only reasonably be part of an alien civilisation's UFO. With no context, alternative, or data beyond orbit and periodicity.
It's bunk.
Just in case you haven't realized it yet, 1 Nov. 2018 is 1 year and 13 days after 19 October, 2017.
The analysis of the extra orbital acceleration matches a 1/r^2 force. In regular comets, that's solar powered outgassing. Or, solar radiation pressure, if the thing is of the right form factor. No evidence of outgassing has been seen. I'm less clear how you get fit that form factor into the observations, but ok. The bulk of the paper, however, is an interesting analysis of how beat up a thin flat thing might get while traveling through interstellar space, something, say, their Breathrough Prize funders are pretty interested in knowing regardless (go google "Breakthrough Starshot"). The breathless "Alien!" headlines are mostly tacked on by places like Slashdot. The actual title of the paper is "COULD SOLAR RADIATION PRESSURE EXPLAIN ‘OUMUAMUA’S PECULIAR ACCELERATION?" (all caps coming from the journal's latex format, not me).
Read more carefully before spraying out "bunk" accusations. You'd make a really bad referee, good thing this paper got some decent ones instead.
From being just a rock and a spaceship.
If you wanted to fly to the stars, you'd need a ship with a very thick hull to handle galactic background radiation. If you wanted to go slow, you'd also make it a generation ship, which means you need something very large for the population and life support.
That's simply not very practical to build. But why build? Find an asteroid on an extreme elliptical orbit, hollow it out, and use the interior for your ship. Walls already made for you, and you've extracted ore you can use to make floors, engines, etc.
It probably was just a fragment from two planets colliding, but the assumption that it couldn't have been that plus a spaceship is flawed.
The lack of signal isn't an issue. Why would a generation ship transmit signals? Who would it transmit to? Space is very big, after all, and radio is very slow. With walls thick enough to shield against galactic winds, nothing on the inside would have reached Earth.
Only way we could have known for sure would be to have put a lander on it. But there's a distinct lack of space probes capable of such redirected missions. Thank you, American tax payer. Arthur C. Clarke would have been fuming. The good news is that the builders of Rama do everything in threes.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)